Seems like dues ex machina that just as AMD falters, things start moving away from PCs and into form factors where ARM is competitive in, so that Intel can't get lazy.

I do hope to see them do well again, but looking at their roadmaps I don't think they'll compete with Intel on high margin PC processors any time soon. And I don't think they can match the power draw of chips needed for tablets yet either, leaving them with in-between solutions. Honestly, I think a buyout is the only thing that has any chance of bringing them back any time soon. I think the x86 licence was renegotiated so that a buyer could still have the licence with Intels approval?

You look at the direction Intel and Nvidia are taking and you can see the survival plan. AMD can be bought and possibly chopped up in to a company with a future. Given the PC market downturn and that it will most likely only get worse, AMD's current path has no path to success on its own.

I worry that without someone biting at their heals Intel will stop pushing the envelope, and will be able to raise prices in the desktop PC space. I used to buy AMD exclusively but the truth is right now they are just not in the high end market.

What about the Fusion processors? Up till now they have been CPU's with bolted on GPU's, never once achieving the level of integration hyped when ATI was incorporated, too long ago now. Instead Intel came steamrolling by (no pun intended). Makes me sad.

What about the Fusion processors? Up till now they have been CPU's with bolted on GPU's, never once achieving the level of integration hyped when ATI was incorporated, too long ago now. Instead Intel came steamrolling by (no pun intended). Makes me sad.

The only news is the amount. Their current board and the Suit Monkey they have running this complicated business that none of them appear to understand have gotten the results that were expected. A failure.

This entire farcical pass at getting into a low profit market is just a slow form of suicide. ARM processors are cheap. Tight designs, tight power and tighter profits. With no fab how can they make money on their SoC designs? They cannot seem to make money on the designs that they can do, so somehow making designs for others, using the same tools, with the fewer engineers is going to turn this business around. I think not.

They built the current road map on Fusion and the APU. It has not delivered in any sense of the word. Switching to a new road map with highways based on ARM and cloud computing might deliver some good news for them but it will mostly be meager profits, if any, and too late as well.

AMD customers are not staying away because AMD is in trouble. They are staying away because they have few products that customers want. Those very important new customers may well avoid AMD because they are in trouble which could be the final nail/straw/whatever.

If people can set aside their Apple love/hate and just read the article impartially, this gives an overview of where Intel and ARM stand in respect to a major PC and mobile vendor. If you substitute 'Microsoft' for 'Apple' the same principles still apply:

AMD will never match Intel's process cadence (no surprise there) so it has to find non-PC markets to grow. The question is if it can get itself embraced by mobile vendors before Intel does. And a bigger crap-shoot is will Apple, Google, and Microsoft themselves make mobile platforms viable enough so that x86 becomes irrelevant outside of business and legacy installations. (Those are not to be dismissed, but they will no longer be drivers of growth, as is already happening.)

I (and my family, since I tend to make their PCs) have mainly had AMD based computers. Of course, the reason why I used AMD is part of the company's problems - I bought them because they were good enough, and cheaper (well, that and generally decent integrated video). But, when their manufacturing isn't quite up to snuff, it's hard to even stay cheap.

I'm actually looking into building an AMD system for use as an ESXi system at home. The virtualization is cheap (and I like that they don't turn off these types of features like Intel does for market segmentation) and the processors are fairly decent, but the amount of power an 8 core processor uses is insane particularly since Intel is close to half that.

I still plan to go with AMD for this system, but it just might be the last one - I don't see AMD keeping up enough.

once again another hit piece by ars on amd. why did you not cover intels earnings....they are under performing as well and they sent the market into a tail spin. amd beat estimates just like intel did; but still fell short, they pretty much line up the same as intel. you dont mention the fact that apu shipments have increased? their sea micro division saw large growth as well and right now they are the top suppler of dense servers? what about the fact that by q3 of this year 20% of their revenue will come from other markets? as always ars is too busy sucking intels c***, to actually do their jobs.

Operating expenses: $450 million by Q3 2013 Capital expenditures: approximately $150 million Taxes: approximately $4 million per quarter To be Free Cash Flow positive by the 2H 2013 Cash balances around $1.1 billion, above target minimum of $700 million

ARM could give Intel a run for its money. Intel has voiced their worry about their inability to compete in the mobile/portable market against ARM if they stagnate.

ARM is an architecture, not a company. The 'if they stagnate' bit is a huge caveat. One thing Intel hasn't been doing lately (thankfully) is stagnating. With the renewed focus on Atom, Intel could become the dominant player in the mobile market.

Once Atom chips can match both the performance, performance-per-watt, and cost of ARM solutions there will be little reason not to go with the Atom option. x86 on everything from phones to big iron servers would certainly make developers' jobs a bit easier.

once again another hit piece by ars on amd. why did you not cover intels earnings....they are under performing as well and they sent the market into a tail spin. amd beat estimates just like intel did; but still fell short, they pretty much line up the same as intel. you dont mention the fact that apu shipments have increased? their sea micro division saw large growth as well and right now they are the top suppler of dense servers? what about the fact that by q3 of this year 20% of their revenue will come from other markets? as always ars is too busy sucking intels c***, to actually do their jobs.

snip

There's a difference between "performing below expectations as a strong company hit by recession and a changing market with a road map and a track record" and "they're hemorrhaging money, have been for years, don't have a compelling product, haven't for years nor have anything on the horizon and at least they didn't go out of business this quarter."

I expect that we're going to see something this year that we've seen before: Intel and AMD are going to sign new cross-licensing agreements. AMD will get the better deal overall because Intel needs AMD. They don't need them to keep spurring them on to better chips or some other competitive reason. They need them because AMD is the only bulwark Intel has against anti-trust concerns that have been brought up ever since the Core 2 architecture brought Intel back to the front of the performance market and AMD started reeling again. Intel might actually even buy access to some AMD patents in exchange for some basic 3D chip technology.

This will help keep AMD afloat and keep US and EU regulators from looking too closely at Intel. That potential scrutiny is part of what keeps Intel from lowering prices to wipe AMD off the map. If they did, they'd guarantee a trade practices suit, and no one would win in that case. Moore's Law would come to a screeching halt because Intel would suddenly be afraid to innovate and take even more market share.

AMD has its uses in spurring competition but also in keeping Intel in business.

(Full disclosure: I have a Radeon video card and ran AMD CPUs in my system and others from the K6 until the Core 2 came out.)

once again another hit piece by ars on amd. why did you not cover intels earnings....they are under performing as well and they sent the market into a tail spin. amd beat estimates just like intel did; but still fell short, they pretty much line up the same as intel. you dont mention the fact that apu shipments have increased? their sea micro division saw large growth as well and right now they are the top suppler of dense servers? what about the fact that by q3 of this year 20% of their revenue will come from other markets? as always ars is too busy sucking intels c***, to actually do their jobs.

snip

There's a difference between "performing below expectations as a strong company hit by recession and a changing market with a road map and a track record" and "they're hemorrhaging money, have been for years, don't have a compelling product, haven't for years nor have anything on the horizon and at least they didn't go out of business this quarter."

oh really...they have been losing money for years? link please? i know you wont find one so let me save you the trouble. they have made money for the last three years straight (minus this past year of course). they still have optimal cash flow so why on earth would they have gone out of business? they have stated as fact that they have contracts set for h2 2013/ 20% of their revenue stream will come from other markets (meaning they are adding 20% more on top of what they do now). an increasing amount of design wins, increased server revenue, they have plenty of compelling products since apu shipments keep increasing...sounds like they are bouncing back just fine?

Well, not really. ARM designs chipsets, etc...but they don't make anything. They license out their designs to anyone willing to pay. This is why you find a lot of incompatible ARM devices on the market. They've all been tweaked and modified to fit a specific vendor's device. They aren't, generally, compatible with one another and unless something major changes you're not going to see the "x86" level of interoperability that AMD / Intel currently have.

Well, not really. ARM designs chipsets, etc...but they don't make anything. They license out their designs to anyone willing to pay. This is why you find a lot of incompatible ARM devices on the market. They've all been tweaked and modified to fit a specific vendor's device. They aren't, generally, compatible with one another and unless something major changes you're not going to see the "x86" level of interoperability that AMD / Intel currently have.

Intel has stated that they have a path to 5nm. That should take us to around 2020 (14nm in '14, 10nm in '16, 7nm in '18). After that the picture is less clear, as we'll probably have to move to something other than silicon.

once again another hit piece by ars on amd. why did you not cover intels earnings....they are under performing as well and they sent the market into a tail spin. amd beat estimates just like intel did; but still fell short, they pretty much line up the same as intel. you dont mention the fact that apu shipments have increased? their sea micro division saw large growth as well and right now they are the top suppler of dense servers? what about the fact that by q3 of this year 20% of their revenue will come from other markets? as always ars is too busy sucking intels c***, to actually do their jobs.

snip

There's a difference between "performing below expectations as a strong company hit by recession and a changing market with a road map and a track record" and "they're hemorrhaging money, have been for years, don't have a compelling product, haven't for years nor have anything on the horizon and at least they didn't go out of business this quarter."

oh really...they have been losing money for years? link please? i know you wont find one so let me save you the trouble. they have made money for the last three years straight (minus this past year of course). they still have optimal cash flow so why on earth would they have gone out of business? they have stated as fact that they have contracts set for h2 2013/ 20% of their revenue stream will come from other markets (meaning they are adding 20% more on top of what they do now). an increasing amount of design wins, increased server revenue, they have plenty of compelling products since apu shipments keep increasing...sounds like they are bouncing back just fine?

Look how they've done it, though. Selling major divisions (i.e. spinning of Global Foundries) and massive lay offs (on the order of 1/4 across their entire work force). Also the article mentioned the investment market isn't too sure of their long-term prospects, which is never a good sign. Other articles mention how their products simply aren't competitive on the order of years behind Intel designs on both the architecture efficiency and foundry technology. Even investing in ARM designs won't do much considering other companies have so many more years invested in fine-tuning designs.

once again another hit piece by ars on amd. why did you not cover intels earnings....they are under performing as well and they sent the market into a tail spin. amd beat estimates just like intel did; but still fell short, they pretty much line up the same as intel. you dont mention the fact that apu shipments have increased? their sea micro division saw large growth as well and right now they are the top suppler of dense servers? what about the fact that by q3 of this year 20% of their revenue will come from other markets? as always ars is too busy sucking intels c***, to actually do their jobs.

snip

There's a difference between "performing below expectations as a strong company hit by recession and a changing market with a road map and a track record" and "they're hemorrhaging money, have been for years, don't have a compelling product, haven't for years nor have anything on the horizon and at least they didn't go out of business this quarter."

oh really...they have been losing money for years? link please? i know you wont find one so let me save you the trouble. they have made money for the last three years straight (minus this past year of course). they still have optimal cash flow so why on earth would they have gone out of business? they have stated as fact that they have contracts set for h2 2013/ 20% of their revenue stream will come from other markets (meaning they are adding 20% more on top of what they do now). an increasing amount of design wins, increased server revenue, they have plenty of compelling products since apu shipments keep increasing...sounds like they are bouncing back just fine?

Look how they've done it, though. Selling major divisions (i.e. spinning of Global Foundries) and massive lay offs (on the order of 1/4 across their entire work force). Also the article mentioned the investment market isn't too sure of their long-term prospects, which is never a good sign. Other articles mention how their products simply aren't competitive on the order of years behind Intel designs on both the architecture efficiency and foundry technology. Even investing in ARM designs won't do much considering other companies have so many more years invested in fine-tuning designs.

Don't forget that AMD used to have a mobile and embedded division which they sold off to Broadcom and Qualcomm (Adreno anybody?). They used to have that talent and expertise and got rid of it all right before that market took off.

I expect that we're going to see something this year that we've seen before: Intel and AMD are going to sign new cross-licensing agreements. AMD will get the better deal overall because Intel needs AMD. They don't need them to keep spurring them on to better chips or some other competitive reason. They need them because AMD is the only bulwark Intel has against anti-trust concerns that have been brought up ever since the Core 2 architecture brought Intel back to the front of the performance market and AMD started reeling again. Intel might actually even buy access to some AMD patents in exchange for some basic 3D chip technology.

This will help keep AMD afloat and keep US and EU regulators from looking too closely at Intel. That potential scrutiny is part of what keeps Intel from lowering prices to wipe AMD off the map. If they did, they'd guarantee a trade practices suit, and no one would win in that case. Moore's Law would come to a screeching halt because Intel would suddenly be afraid to innovate and take even more market share.

AMD has its uses in spurring competition but also in keeping Intel in business.

(Full disclosure: I have a Radeon video card and ran AMD CPUs in my system and others from the K6 until the Core 2 came out.)

There isn't anything illegal about a natural monopoly, which I believe is what Intel would become should AMD go under. However, they would have tread very lightly regarding AMD's x86 license. Part of deal is that Intel holds rights of refusal to it. Say AMD goes bankrupt and IBM steps in. Intel shoots down the deal, as they see IBM as too much of a threat, given IBM's track record of actually knowing what they're doing. A competing bid comes in from some douchebag investor group that will 'save the day' by not booting the CEO and the entire board. Assuming Douchebag LLC's bid is lower than IBM's (or even not significantly higher) than IBM's, Intel could go under the microscope at that point, on the basis of not wanting too strong a competitor. (disclaimer: I'm not an idiot; I know IBM has zero interest in buying AMD.)

Even at that, Intel could easily buy themselves a couple congressman to point out there is a third x86 licensee, Via, and argue that two is enough. Even though Via has never been competition to Intel, and has no interest that they've ever expressed publicly.

For that matter, that might be where AMD should aim - if they can't get more traction in the consumer market, it seems like it wouldn't be a great stretch for them to dominate the embedded market. They have a presence there, but that appears to be Via's bread and butter - AMD might be able to compete a whole lot better in a market where performance and power aren't the be-all, end-all. Until some ARM licensee sees the potential (and software starts to grow and develop around it) and steps in - it'll be quite some time before any x86 licensee will be able to compete with $10 SOCs.

At the end of the day, the board needs to boot Rory Reed and bring in someone that has a fucking clue on how to run a processor company.

Seems like dues ex machina that just as AMD falters, things start moving away from PCs and into form factors where ARM is competitive in, so that Intel can't get lazy.

I do hope to see them do well again, but looking at their roadmaps I don't think they'll compete with Intel on high margin PC processors any time soon. And I don't think they can match the power draw of chips needed for tablets yet either, leaving them with in-between solutions. Honestly, I think a buyout is the only thing that has any chance of bringing them back any time soon. I think the x86 licence was renegotiated so that a buyer could still have the licence with Intels approval?

I expect that we're going to see something this year that we've seen before: Intel and AMD are going to sign new cross-licensing agreements. AMD will get the better deal overall because Intel needs AMD. They don't need them to keep spurring them on to better chips or some other competitive reason. They need them because AMD is the only bulwark Intel has against anti-trust concerns...

This might have been true previously (for a couple of years toward the end of the last decade), but Intel doesn't need AMD any more, because the entire x86 ecosystem is increasingly struggling to compete against the increasingly high-powered ARM Cortex A series which runs increasingly modern and capable software -- touch-screen user interfaces have made most legacy x86 software look positively old-hat, seriously eroding the "home team" advantage that x86 had previously enjoyed. The differences between phones/ tablets/ laptops/ workstations are being blurred, as progress in semiconductor technology enables the former to be more powerful, and as fewer and fewer enterprise end-user applications actually require a big box sitting on/under a desk, and as more processor-intensive tasks get pushed off into "the cloud".

EDIT: This comment was not previously well received, and the latter part of it (now snipped away) was probably partly wrong anyway in light of data from AMD's latest earnings report. The chances are that AMD will make a success of their server parts business (which have been selling in good numbers to supercomputer constructors for some time). I think the risks of AMD going bankrupt have been overdone, especially when you consider the rich & involved backing they've been given by the investment authority of Abu Dhabi.

They need them because AMD is the only bulwark Intel has against anti-trust concerns that have been brought up ever since the Core 2 architecture brought Intel back to the front of the performance market and AMD started reeling again.

There isn't anything illegal about a natural monopoly, which I believe is what Intel would become should AMD go under.

At the end of the day, the board needs to boot Rory Reed and bring in someone that has a fucking clue on how to run a processor company.

There is no anti-trust concern if AMD fails because of poor decision-making. Neither the FTC or Justice Department has shown any interest in resurrecting failed companies. Indeed they would both point to the settlement between AMD and Intel as the end of interest in the matter.

As for the BOD booting Rory Reed, that won't happen and it won't solve the problem. Rory is the BOD's choice - the BOD would have to admit it erred. Rory is pretty safe I'd say, because he can point to the strategy he is executing and say, "Hey, I'm doing what you hired me to do, you are responsible too." Ego is a limiting factor at that level for admitting errors. Not to mention the huge churn that would ensue if Rory was booted. The real problem is who hired Rory and who advocated the strategy AMD is currently pursuing: the BOD.

It is my opinion, after having observed strategic change at five semiconductor companies (from the inside), that when a BOD decides what the company strategy is, that company is in trouble. Boards, which meet once per quarter, aren't engaged enough in the nuts and bolts of running a semi company to drive good strategy. They can hold the CEO's feet to the fire to create one, approve it (or not), and hold the execs accountable for good execution. At some point AMD's BOD decided it would set strategy...

In any event, the changes have been so dramatic and drastic that AMD is committed, for good or ill.

I played a very small role in the launch of bulldozer, after which I decided that AMD had lost the plot.

I've always been interested in computers and CPUs - I've been reading Ars since Jon Stokes began writing articles about CPU architecture in the late 90s - so I was looking forward to working with AMD on their launch event and I was really hoping that bulldozer would turn out to be a great chip that helped them find their feet again.

AMD wanted the theme of the launch to be "the cloud", so we presented a whole range of concepts based on what you can do with 'the cloud' - everything everywhere, social networks, always accessible etc etc etc.

AMD said no. That's networking. They wanted the cloud. Not networking. (Silly us!!!)

We came up with some concepts where we zoomed into cloud shapes to show they were made up of photos, music, friends and so on.

AMD said no. That's still networking. They also said we were not allowed to use circles, and especially not circles connected by lines. Apparently their networking division used circles to demonstrate networks and so under no circumstances were we to use circles and lines, in case people confused networking with "the cloud". Heaven forbid...

In fact they didn't really want to explore "the cloud" as a concept at all - they didn't want to look at any examples, explanations, or future potential. They just wanted to say 'the cloud' a lot.

We came up with different creative treatments for cloud images, but they didn't like anything. The only thing they liked was a simplified, cartoon-style cloud image that looked like a piece of clip art from Microsoft Word, but tinted AMD green. That was the only cloud image they liked, so it was the only one that got used. And because we didn't really have any other content- because they didn't want any content in case people confused 'the cloud' with networking- we pretty much just had lots of pictures of a crappy cartoon cloud and the AMD logo.

Before I started work on the project I was hoping the launch event would be a great opportunity to use my personal interests and knowledge to produce something really special. In the end it was a slow, tedious experience and the end result was an incomprehensible mess that didn't even make sense to me. Unless you really like pictures of cartoon clouds in which case it was awesome.

The writing was on the wall 3 or so years ago. The problem is now, because customers know they are in trouble, they are not buying their products.

Customers don't buy a product because the company is in good shape, they buy products that give them bang for the buck. Intel's price/performance ration is pretty good right now, so AMD is taking it in the butt.

I bought an e-machine a few years ago, which came with an AMD processor, I went with it due to the affordable price. I knew it wasn't the faster processor on the market, but price meant more to me at the time. I am quite happy with my purchase. I've always appreciated those companies that provided a decent product for a lower price. AMD is one of those companies imo. Hope they are able to turn things around soon.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't AMD going to be the chip supplier for the next gen video game consoles? That alone should be a boost to their financial dilemma considering those systems sell millions upon millions every year.

I'm always saddened when I see AMD in such financial trouble. Like most of you, I dream of a processor market with two (or three, if we were lucky) strong competitors creating a healthy market. I've often used AMD processors for my own desktop systems - I've never felt outclassed by Intel's (often) superior performance, and I've enjoyed the bang-for-the-buck value that AMD traditionally offered. It's too bad that, even at the value-level, AMD is losing out to Intel's i3. With that said, I've recently transitioned my parents to Intel architecture, and it's likely that my next upgrade will be to Intel.

I don't have any sage economic or business advice to give - just sad to see a great company struggling.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't AMD going to be the chip supplier for the next gen video game consoles? That alone should be a boost to their financial dilemma considering those systems sell millions upon millions every year.

Remember that AMD is no longer a manufacturer, they are merely a CPU/GPU design studio. As such, the next gen video consoles will be merely a one time contract for design. Once the design is frozen ... that's it. So AMD may merely extend their inevitable death by another year or two.